The primary objective of the Urban Resilience Competition, is to showcase new and innovative work already being undertaken in the field of urban resilience that offers transformative solutions; combines multi-disciplinary perspectives; and builds partnerships in a bottom-up participatory manner of design and implementation. By highlighting key initiatives that take the principles of scaling up and inclusivity into account, we hope this work will serve as an inspiration for others in addressing common and persistent urban resilience challenges.

Three winners of the Urban Resilience Competition will be selected and will receive travel support to present their work in a panel discussion on urban resilience at the Asia Urban Futures Workshop, organized by USAID, United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and United Nations Global Pulse.  The Urban Futures Workshop will be held in Bangkok, Thailand October 14- 15, 2014.    In addition, the winning projects will be publicized broadly regionally and globally through press releases and social media posts by USAID and the UN agencies. Winners will also receive a social media guidance packet to help communicate their selection as a winner to their broader social media network.

APPLICATIONS

Applicants can be from individuals, organizations, city planning groups or governments who have developed, or contributed to, multi-disciplinary, innovative initiatives focused on urban resilience in Asia.   Applications may involve multiple partner organizations.

Projects must relate to one of the following themes, in the context of urban resilience:

Environmental Sustainability: climate change, energy saving

Disaster Protection: flood, drought, earthquake prediction and protection

Urban Planning and Governance: city planning and budgeting, vulnerability and modeling, slum development, urban sanitation, urban services

Reducing Poverty and Inequality: empowering women, education, economic inclusion, novel business models for urban workforce


We are seeking projects contributing to long-term urban resilience that have either recently piloted or been established within the past three years. Applications will be evaluated by a panel of judges, and the decision of the judges will be final .


REVIEW CRITERIA

Innovation: the ground-breaking nature of the activity, for instance, pioneering of new decision-making, planning or   implementation methodologies

Sustainability and inclusion: including integration with government planning, bottom-up participatory approaches with community inclusion and contribution to long-term alleviation of vulnerability

Evidence based decision making: including use of futures analysis, scenario planning, or other robust analytical processes and sound data

Measurable impact and transformational results: as reflected by quantifiable project accomplishments in addressing one of the four thematic areas

Scope/potential for scalability